If the application season isn’t going as you’d hoped, your thoughts might turn to alternative routes for your medical education. Perhaps you’re thinking about retaking the MCAT, boosting your GPA with postbaccalaureate coursework, or spending a year in a clinical or research environment. Or you might be thinking about warm, tropical breezes and the island…
A Strategic Guide for Applying to Medical School
When premed students contact us about guiding them through the medical school application process, many of their questions are related to timing. “When should I …?” is a frequent question starter. Although no single answer applies to everyone, here are the guidelines we use when advising our medical school clients. When should I apply to…
When Will Medical Schools Give You an Answer?
Sadly, the frustrating truth is that there’s no rule governing how much time a medical school has to respond to your application. However, in this post, we’ll try to mitigate some of that frustration by answering a couple of the big questions you might have as an anxious med school applicant, including the following: When…
How to Defer a Medical School Acceptance
Life happens. After all the effort you put into getting accepted to medical school, sometimes the timing just doesn’t work. Over the years, I’ve worked with many clients who, after receiving an acceptance, found themselves in a difficult position when it came to actually starting their medical studies. Receiving a Fulbright scholarship to study abroad,…
The Nine Mistakes to Avoid on a Medical School Waitlist
Imagine this scenario: a medical school applicant works hard to earn a competitive GPA and a high MCAT score; they submit their primary application on the opening date and submit their secondaries within two weeks of receiving the prompts; they do well at their interview and are told to expect a decision within a few…
2025-2026 AMCAS Work and Activities Section: What to Include (with Examples)
The AMCAS Work and Activities section is where you will share all your research, clinical experiences, paid employment, publications, leadership, extracurricular activities, awards, memberships, volunteer work, and advocacy and social justice efforts. The types of activities that you include, the length of time you participated in them, and your description of these events all have…
M3 Journaling: How It Can Help Your Residency Application
As you begin your third year of medical school, what are you doing to prepare for the residency match? Chances are, you’re up to your eyeballs in rotations and exams and everything else that goes into the third year of your medical degree. Chances are, you’re not thinking much about your personal statement or future…
What’s the Best Way to Prep for Your Residency Interview?
Your residency interview is your chance to show your target programs that you’ve got what it takes to join their team. Everything in your application, including your medical student performance evaluation and other evaluations, is fair game for interviewers. These are some of the most common questions you’ll hear: You’re also likely to be asked…
The Role of the Committee Letter: Your Key to Medical School Acceptance
Letters of evaluation are critical elements of a competitive medical school application. A strong letter will complement your essays and experience descriptions, giving admissions committee members a valuable outside perspective on your potential in the field of medicine. Medical schools accept three types of letters: individual letters, letter packets, and committee letters. However, many prefer…
All You Need to Know About Residency Applications and Matching
You’re busy juggling med school and life, and if you don’t stay organized, one of those balls is going to come crashing down. Let’s take a look at what you need to do so you can stay focused, motivated, and completely on top of your juggling act. What Are the Components of a Residency Application?…
Practicing for Your Med School Interview
Most applicants come away from their first medical school interview saying, “That wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be.” As with many things in life, the anticipation of a stressful event can sometimes be worse than the event itself. Although many med schools work hard to make applicants who are interviewing feel relaxed, this…
The MMI: Everything You Need to Know
The Multiple Mini Interview (MMI) has become a very common med school interview format – one that is meant to provide a fairer, more comprehensive assessment of applicants. It’s grown in popularity since 2004, when Canada’s McMaster University published a study illustrating the flaws in the traditional interview format, especially in the ways that interviewers…
Make the Most of Your Experiences for ERAS
The 2025 ERAS (Electronic Residency Application Service) application follows on last year’s restructured application, with a few changes. As in the 2024 ERAS, rather than including every relevant experience you’ve had, as you might on a CV, you must choose ten experience entries that communicate who you are and what’s most important to you. And…
First Drafts of Residency Personal Statements: Let Yourself Go
For many residency applicants, writing the first draft of their personal statement is the most difficult part of the entire application process. And the most difficult part of composing that first draft is often getting the first few words on the page. Don’t fret – even accomplished novelists and famous journalists struggle to get started…
Writing Compelling Activity Descriptions to Boost Your Med School Application
Having worked in admissions for over two decades, I have read thousands of activity descriptions for medical school and related healthcare fields. Some candidates seem to view this element of their application as less important than their personal statement, writing only cursory descriptions of their tasks. Other applicants fill out only a few of their…
How Your Academic Statistics Influence Your Medical School Choices
The most reliable source of information about allopathic medical schools is the Medical School Admission Requirements (MSAR) website, offered by the AAMC (Association of American Medical Colleges). The statistics in this database can be extremely valuable in helping you decide where to apply. Most applicants look immediately at the data on MCAT scores and GPAs,…
Applying to Medical School with a Low Science GPA
The process of applying to medical school is already stressful. And since selection committees are looking for evidence that you are ready for medical school, applying with a low science GPA can make the process even more nerve-wracking. In fact, in a 2023 study of 128 U.S. medical schools, admissions officers said that an applicant’s…
Four Tips for Applying as an Underrepresented Applicant in Medicine
Each year, I talk to applicants who say they don’t want their ethnic or racial identity to be part of their medical school application. Their hesitation usually stems from a desire to be judged purely on their merits. This is a noble principle that I respect. However, from the general perspective of the medical profession,…
Early Decision for Medical School: Does It Make Sense For You?
Do you have a dream school, the one place you’ve always wanted to study medicine, and no other school will do? Do you have a compelling reason for attending this one particular program? Maybe your spouse’s job requires them to be in this location, or your only living family member is in the area. Or…
How to Prepare for Medical School: Four Important Things to Know Before Applying
Before he was Joshua Wienczkowski, MD, a prevention and addiction medicine specialist, he was a premed juggling coursework and extracurriculars and trying to make the right choices for his best shot at medical school. During his first year of medical school, he looked back on these choices with a critical eye. “When you burn through…
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